Wuthering Waves

Wuthering Waves is an open-world 3D action role-playing game set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic world. The story follows the amnesiac Rover, who has awoken from a deep slumber and sets out to explore this new world.

YEAR    2024
SITE    Link
GENRE/S Action RPG
DEV     Kuro Games

Notes

2.2 is WuWa's strongest writing yet, with big improvements in their character writing since 1.0. I'm also enjoying how it explores its themes around faith. Feeling pretty optimistic about where it's headed.

Also, love the Avinoleum.

2.0 was fun! While the story dragged in some parts (Act 3 felt unnecessarily long), there were a lot of things that I really enjoyed: the cinematics, Zani (!!!), and the new flight mechanic.

As for the current banner, Carlotta’s design didn’t appeal to me at first, but her character won me over. I’m saving my astrites to see if Zani’s worth it, but if not, Carlotta’s a solid choice when she reruns.

1.3 felt like it was trying a little too hard to make me feel a certain way about the Shorekeeper when I barely knew anything about her. (But I guess that fits with the whole amnesiac Rover thing.) She did grow on me toward the end, and I felt for her and Rover's relationship.

We also got new lore (yay!), great music, and a new location.

Still, pacing felt a little rushed with so much lore crammed into so little time. And what could've been a key emotional moment for Rover was carried so hard by the music and cinematics (don't get me wrong - I liked those a lot) but the storytelling didn't really build up to a more impactful finish.

I really wanted to like Yinlin so I was looking forward to her companion story, but it ended up being a huge disappointment.

It felt sloppy, unnecessarily convoluted, and had poor cohesion between the story's themes and Yinlin's character. Some elements could've worked with a better narrative structure, but others felt pointless or were completely forgotten. The inconsistent quality of the EN dub didn’t help either (one of Lirong’s lines even cut into a British voice at one point).

Overall, it was rushed, unpolished, and unfulfilling. Honestly felt like a rough draft that needed a lot of trimming and refining.

This was a lot of fun! Combat feels pretty good, and I'm liking the environment and creature designs so far (I love you disco turtle).

Story seems pretty straightfoward, a chosen hero, power fantasy, wish fulfillment formula, which I personally like. That said, the writing doesn't have much going on, and the characters were just... there?

Also, this is one of the few times I'm leaning toward the English dub over the Japanese one. I like the voice quality of a lot of the English cast more, I think they fit most of the characters better, but could probably use better direction.

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